Chan Marshall may be a reformed enigma, but she remains an enigma nonetheless.
Innocently alluring and possessed of one of the smokiest, most hypnotic voices in modern music, she has been recording and performing under the Cat Power moniker since 1995. The end of the '90s saw her gaining critical and underground respect for her intriguing and often disquieting albums. Chan-pronounced "Shawn"-also gained notoriety for her erratic live performances.
But with the January release of her seventh album, The Greatest (Matador), things have changed. Her media presence has grown, and in recent interviews with high profile publications she has candidly discussed her depression, performance anxiety and substance abuse.
Now, a newly sober Marshall is breaking new ground. The Greatest has been re-released with new packaging and a new ad campaign, and her tour with the Memphis Rhythm Band comes through Cat's Cradle on Sunday.
The nature of Marshall's fans and the words they so often use to describe her suggest such a change might not be welcome. Duke's own Cat Power group on Facebook, "Cult of Chan," describes her as a "shy, troubled troubadour." Scanning the back archives of Matador Record's message board, words like "timid," "fascinating" and "tortured" come up evey few posts. There is no question that the mystique of Cat Power is deeply important to her devotees.
On stage, she used to be a totemic figure, playing her simple guitar lines with little body movement and intoning her mysterious and sometimes harrowing lyrics in a sweet half-whisper. For many years, this (with or without a minimalist backing band) was the core of her act. Atmosphere did the rest. The silence around the sound of her guitar and voice somehow amplified the intensity of her words and music, and audiences stood rapt.
That intensity came at a dear price for Marshall.
Until recently, her drinking had become heavier and heavier, and she was in the habit of taking Xanax before shows to control her stage fright.
"It was about the uncomfortableness of just being in my own skin," she told the New York Times in September. "And that's why the alcohol was always with me."
In January, weeks before the release of The Greatest, she was admitted to Miami's Mt. Sinai Medical Center, forcing her label to push back tour dates.
The album, although recorded before her breakdown and recovery, sounds hopeful. Stylistically, it's a far cry from hazy, meandering Cat Power classics like "American Flag" or "Cross Bones Style." Marshall has said the record is a return to the soul music she loved as a child: horns, strings and clean guitars carry her voice to beautiful heights.
In light of such a striking new direction, backlash was inevitable. Indie pundits in particular seem worried about the accessibility of her less oblique sound. Amy Phillips, in her review of The Greatest on pitchforkmedia.com even groused that the album "could be battling [Norah Jones'] 'Don't Know Why' for airplay supremacy on Mom's car stereo in the coming months."
Female musicians walk a delicate line. The public expects them either to be glamorous pop stars or demure folkies. As Richie Unterberger noted in his All Music Guide essay "Women In Rock," since the alternative explosion of the early '90s, indie and underground rock has been the most rewarding area for unconventional female artists. But in the end, many careers have suffered at the hands of an audience that doesn't want them to change.
And yet Marshall's fans, including those at Duke, seem to be embracing her personal achievements, even if not everyone agrees on the album.
"I think it's great," said senior Anne Rosenbarger. "Some friends of mine saw her last year and she stopped the show early. I think [her new attitude] will help her a lot."
It's easy to understand the morbid curiosity involved in attending a performance by a notoriously unstable artist: it's spectacle, it's performance art. Many male artists, from Jim Morrison to Kurt Cobain, have suffered and profited from such audience expectations.
Tellingly, Marshall's 2003 album You Are Free opened with "I Don't Blame You," a wistful piano ballad written to and for Cobain, and addressing his turbulent relationship with fame from a personal standpoint.
But Marshall seems to have an important asset on her side: supportive fans.
"I never noticed they really liked me before," she told the Times. Here's hoping she comes onstage smiling Sunday.
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